Is the purpose of those three news stories to justify that COVID was here sooner than thought?
Because at least two of the three specifically call out that the strains were split between Influenza A and Influenza B, not that there was some strange coronavirus that had appeared. I'm assuming that if they know enough to say it was split between Influenza A and B, they know enough to differentiate between the flu and a coronavirus.
I'd buy the argument if we were seeing similar symptoms earlier and didn't know the source, but in this case they determined the source.